This tool is used for spacing many types of decking material in many applications. It can be used in the construction of decks, docks, stairs and anywhere uniform gaps are required between decking members.
There are only a few requirements for a sound deck. Build it level, square, structurally sound, and have your decking run straight with uniform gaps. The reasons you gap your planks is for swelling of the boards, no build up of debris, and to allow water to run off the surface.
When in use, the tool is controlled easily by the worker both when being retracted and while drilling. When the tool has spaced the board sufficiently enough it is simply flipped back, and locked in place with a couple of turns of the handle. All of this is done without pulling a spacer out of a tool pouch or walking across the deck to where it might have been used last. The tool stays on the drill ready for use until the job is done.
The most unique feature about this tool is that it takes out a step thus freeing up a hand for the worker to grab the next screw faster. Using alternative methods makes the task that much longer, in which the process would be; pulling the spacer out of the tool pouch, putting the spacer in, grabbing a screw, screwing the plank down, pulling the spacer out from between the planks, putting the spacer in the tool pouch and moving to the next joist.
There are many tools for spacing decking. Some more elaborate than others. They range from the old art of using a nail to multi-functioning tools such as Phillips U.S. Pat. No. 4,930,225 where it has holes for you to space your screws or nails, it has an angle on one end to mark out boards and it has a ruler on the side for measuring. This tool pretty much sums up all of the deck spacing tools patented today. But it is completely unnecessary. You don't need screw positioning holes. You put the screws where they look good. You don't need an angle on the tool because the speed square invented by Alfred J. Swanson in 1925 does that and the majority of construction workers own one. And everybody has a tape measurer. All of the tools out there vary, but they are all more complicated than they have to be.
Using a nail is the way of the past. New tools should outdo the previous ones by making the job easier and more efficient. Having to keep track of little spacers or lugging around bigger ones slows the job down and creates an unorganized workspace. It's time to take a step forward with this process.